Lucky Kleinschmidt
Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt is Luanne's husband. Lucky is voiced by Tom Petty. Lucky got his nickname from an incident at a Costco store where he went in to buy a 78-inch TV, realized he had to go to the bathroom, and slipped in a puddle of urine. The resulting injury left Lucky in constant pain. Lucky sued the store and received a cash settlement of $53,000, which caused his friends to see him as lucky -- hence, the nickname. Lucky refers to the cash settlement as "mah pee-pee money," and one of his catchphrases is "I done slipped on pee-pee at the Costco." The Costco story is partially contradicted in the episode "Luanne Gets Lucky," where Lucky says that he was at the store purchasing a new cable for his winch, rather than buying a TV. Lucky claims he will never have to work another day in his life, even though the Costco settlement isn't nearly enough to provide for his needs for the rest of his life. After the Costco "pee-pee" incident, Lucky made a vocation of going into stores, intentionally injuring himself, and suing the owner. Lucky actually manages to make a decent living this way. At one point (in the episode "Lucky's Wedding Suit"), his funds had dwindled to $9,000, and Hank referred Lucky to Dale's Deadbug for some temporary work. Lucky and Dale did some horsing around on Dale's basement steps, the railing collapsed, and Lucky fell, injuring his back. With some regret, Lucky filed a lawsuit against Dale. However, events quickly spun out of control, and Lucky's attorney threatened to sue Strickland Propane instead (on the grounds that Hank was acting as a Strickland employee when he referred Lucky to Dale), correctly sensing higher fee potential in suing Strickland than in suing Dale. With the help of Dale and Hank, Lucky was able to manipulate things so that the attorney would come out on the wrong end of a lawsuit, and the attorney ended up cutting Lucky a check for $53,000 to make the whole thing go away. Lucky has a definite tendency toward scam artistry, as seen in his abortive lawsuit against Dale and subsequently getting a settlement from his own attorney. Lucky also once stole Hank's trash cans for his garbage. Lucky is also somewhat dim-witted: He once cut his hand on barbed wire and refused to go to the hospital because (he says) his family dies in hospitals. In spite of his flaws, Lucky is a genuinely good-hearted person: He cares deeply for Luanne and always tries his best to do right by her. In "Edu-macating Lucky," where they learn that Luanne is pregnant, he tries to get his GED so that he'll be worthy by his own honor code to ask Luanne to marry him. Lucky fails, due to Peggy's intentionally tutoring him with wrong information (to which she later confessed), so he asks for and receives a shotgun wedding from Hank, thus doing the right thing by Luanne while remaining true to himself -- and finally being welcomed into the Hill family. Lucky also shows his devotion to Luanne in the episode "Life: A Loser's Manual" when he protects Luanne from learning that her father is in prison, preserving Luanne's good image of her father by allowing her to continue believing that he is an oil rig worker instead of a convict. Lucky's and Leanne's daughter Gracie is born in the episode "Lucky See, Monkey Do." Behind the Scenes Some King of the Hill fans find it strange, and even upsetting, that Luanne ended up with Lucky even though he was twice her age, because Luanne previously said that she would never date (let alone marry) anyone who was that much older than her. Lucky's joining the cast and subsequent marriage to Luanne have also been cited as reasons for the show's boning the fish. Category:Characters